If God, why evil? How can a loving God send people to Hell?

1. If God, why evil? How can a loving God send people to Hell? What about those who have never heard of Jesus? Isn’t Jesus just a copy of pagan god myths? Hasn’t science disproven the Genesis story? What about all the other ‘gospels’ of Jesus? Isn’t the Old Testament God ruthless and cruel? What’s wrong with gay marriage? Isn’t Christianity demeaning to women? How can there be only one way to God?

2. Hasn’t Science Disproven the Story of Genesis? THE QUESTION: Science tells us that the earth is billions of years old, but the creation account in Genesis seems to indicate that the earth is really just thousands of years old. How can the Bible be true if it can’t get that right?

3. “The problem is getting [people] to reject irrational and supernatural explanations of the world, the demons that exist only in their imaginations, and to accept a social and intellectual apparatus, Science, as the only begetter of truth.” - Richard Lewontin, Harvard Geneticist Hasn’t Science Disproven the Story of Genesis? “I am all in favor of a dialogue between science and religion, but not a constructive dialogue. One of the great achievements of science has been, if not to make it impossible for an intelligent person to be religious, then at least to make it possible for them not to be religious. We should not retreat from this accomplishment.” - Steven Weinberg, Physicist “Any debate with creationists would give them the oxygen of respectability.” - Richard Dawkins, Evolutionist/Atheist

4. “In some ways these chapters [Genesis 1-11] are the most important ones in the Bible, for they put man in his cosmic setting and show him his peculiar uniqueness. They explain man’s wonder and yet his flaw. Without a proper understanding of these chapters we have no answer to the problems of metaphysics, morals, or epistemology, and furthermore, the work of Christ becomes one more upper-story “religious” answer.” - Francis Schaeffer, Genesis in Space and Time Hasn’t Science Disproven the Story of Genesis?

5. Primary Cause Naturalistic Creation Theistic Creation Hasn’t Science Disproven the Story of Genesis? Theism Naturalism Theistic Evolution Naturalistic Evolution Secondary Cause

6. 4 Basic Views of Origins Hasn’t Science Disproven the Story of Genesis? Naturalistic Evolution – No God involved in creation; things emerged by pure, natural processes. Naturalistic Creation – No theistic Creator beyond the world; only a creative Mind within the universe that creates. Theistic Evolution – God directly created the universe, but living things emerged under His control by largely natural processes. Theistic Creation – God directly created the universe, living things, and human beings. How many things were originally created and how much time it took to create them is debated

7. Herbert Spencer on categories of reality Time Force Action Space Matter Hasn’t Science Disproven the Story of Genesis? Time Force Action Space Matter “In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the earth.” – Genesis 1:1 Spencer was an evolutionist and coined the phrase “survival of the fittest”

8. 7Orthodox Views of Theistic Creation Hasn’t Science Disproven the Story of Genesis? • Young Earth – Earth is thousands of years old. • Standard Six-Day Creation • Ideal-Time • Old Earth – Earth could be millions/billions of years old. • Long ‘Days’ • Revelatory-Days • Day-Age • Literary Framework • Gap View

9. Six-Day Creation View Hasn’t Science Disproven the Story of Genesis? • Young earth category • Interprets Genesis literally and chronologically • Natural reading of the text presents the case that the six days in Genesis 1 are six normal 24-hour days • The normal use of the word ‘Yom’, the numbered series, and the repetition of ‘evening and morning’ support six days of creation • Comparison with a six-day work week (Ex. 20:11) supports six days of creation

10. Ideal-Time View Hasn’t Science Disproven the Story of Genesis? • Young earth category • All things were created with the appearance of age. For example, Adam may have looked 30 years old when he was created but was only seconds old • Applies to all things including the earth, trees, etc. • Would cause certain scientific tests to arrive at incorrect conclusions

11. Long ‘Days’ View Hasn’t Science Disproven the Story of Genesis? • Old earth category • Proposes both biblical and scientific evidence to support the view that the ‘days’ of Genesis are actually long periods of time • ‘Yom’ (Hebrew word for day) often means more than just a 24-hour period of time. “Day” is from God’s perspective • "This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made earth and heaven." (Genesis 2:4) • Seventh “day” has been thousands of years long (God still resting

12. Long ‘Days’ View Hasn’t Science Disproven the Story of Genesis? • Third day may be longer than 24 hours. "The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed after their kind, and trees bearing fruit with seed in them, after their kind; and God saw that it was good." (Genesis 1:12). Process seems to be natural, not supernatural • Sixth day may be longer than 24 hours. Land animals, man, woman created, and Adam names the animals • Speed of light and rate of expansion of the universe • Scientific dating of rocks and the rate that salt runs into the sea and the amount of salt there seems to indicate long ‘days’

13. Revelatory Days View Hasn’t Science Disproven the Story of Genesis? • Old earth category • Asserts that the six days were 24-hour days of revelation that God gave to Moses who wrote Genesis • Just as God used visions to reveal future events to his prophets, this view asserts that God revealed a past series of events to Moses regarding creation • Some say “asah” used in Exodus 20:11 can mean “reveal: • “For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and made it holy." (Exodus 20:11)

14. Day-Age View Hasn’t Science Disproven the Story of Genesis? • Old earth category • Asserts that the six days were 24-hour days of actual creation • Between each day there was a long period of time where things took place • Third day indicates a process may be involved that took longer than 24 hours. • "The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed after their kind, and trees bearing fruit with seed in them, after their kind; and God saw that it was good." (Genesis 1:12)

15. Literary Framework View Hasn’t Science Disproven the Story of Genesis? • Old earth category • Asserts that the six days were an ancient literary device that was sometimes used to frame certain periods of time in order to encapsulate them in literary form much like we use a ‘chapter’ in a book to do the same • “Morning” and “Evening” were natural ways to point to a beginning and an end • Held by Augustine who believed God created everything instantly, but used a allegorical framework to convey His work • However, Genesis doesn’t seem to be the genre of poetry

16. Gap/Ruin-Reconstruction View • Old earth category • Thomas Chalmers early champion • States that there is a gap of time either between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2 or there was a gap of time that occurred prior to 1:1 • Lucifer was originally given dominion of the earth as the ‘covering cherub’, but when he sinned, God judged both him and his domain Hasn’t Science Disproven the Story of Genesis? • The six days of creation in Genesis are not an original creation, but a reconstruction of the earth • God then granted a new steward – man – to be in charge of the remade earth

17. Gap/Ruin-Reconstruction View Hasn’t Science Disproven the Story of Genesis? Original creation of Heavens and earth; Lucifer given dominion Fall of Lucifer; he and earth judged by God God remakes earth and gives it to Adam Fall of man; Satan regains earth Untold number of years Untold number of years ?of years Human history up until now… Gen. 1:1 Is. 14:12-14 Ez. 28:12-17 2 Peter 3:3-6 Gen. 1:2-31 Gen. 3

18. Gap/Ruin-Reconstruction View " In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters." (Genesis 1:1-2) Hasn’t Science Disproven the Story of Genesis? “formless” = “tohuw”; literally “a wreck/chaos” “void” = “bohuw”; literally “a waste” Only used in 2 other places (Jer. 4:23, Isa. 34:11); describes divine judgment "For thus says the Lord, who created the heavens (He is the God who formed the earth and made it, He established it and did not create it “tohuw”, but formed it to be inhabited), “I am the Lord, and there is none else." (Isaiah 45:18)

19. 7Orthodox Views of Theistic Creation Hasn’t Science Disproven the Story of Genesis? • Young Earth – Earth is thousands of years old. • Standard Six-Day Creation • Ideal-Time • Old Earth – Earth could be millions/billions of years old. • Long ‘Days’ • Revelatory-Days • Day-Age • Literary Framework • Gap View

20. Hasn’t Science Disproven the Story of Genesis? What Happens When You Reject Genesis?

21. The Only Options “There are not many options – essentially just two. Either human intelligence ultimately owes its origin to mindless matter; or there is a Creator. It is strange that some people claim that it is their intelligence that leads them to prefer the first to the second.” - John Lennox, God’s Undertaker Hasn’t Science Disproven the Story of Genesis?

22. The Core Positions Hasn’t Science Disproven the Story of Genesis?

23. The Big Questions… 1. Why do we have something rather than nothing at all? Evolution contributes nothing to answering this question as it involves the supposed change that occurs in alreadyexisting biological entities. Evolution tries to explain how something works, not why something exists. Hasn’t Science Disproven the Story of Genesis? 2. How can mindless matter create mind? “It is self-evident that only mind can create mind.”, J. S. Mill 3. How can an impersonal, amoral, meaningless and purposeless universe accidently create beings who are full of personality and obsessed with morals, meaning, and purpose? Such as case violates what we know from the study of causation, namely that a cause cannot give what it doesn’t have.

24. The Cosmological Argument • Everything that begins to exist must have a cause • The universe began to exist • Therefore, the universe had a cause Hasn’t Science Disproven the Story of Genesis? “I never asserted so absurd a proposition as that anything might arise without a cause.” - David Hume, Scottish Skeptic “Nothing can come into being from that which is not”- Demokritos, Greek Philosopher

25. The Cosmological Argument "By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible." (Hebrews 11:3) Hasn’t Science Disproven the Story of Genesis? • Rebuke to Platonic cosmogony (Demiurge forming the world from pre-existent matter) • Rebuke to theistic evolution

26. Conclusions • Creation is the best and most reasonable stance to hold when examining how everything we know came to be • Primary reason natural man rejects creation is because an impersonal universe cannot call him into moral account like a personal Creator can • The seven orthodox views of Genesis should not be a test for faith and do not violate any core Christian doctrine • Young vs. Old Earth should not be a stumbling block you put before a person considering Christianity Hasn’t Science Disproven the Story of Genesis?

27. If God, why evil? How can a loving God send people to Hell? What about those who have never heard of Jesus? Isn’t Jesus just a copy of pagan god myths? Hasn’t science disproven the Genesis story? What about all the other ‘gospels’ of Jesus? Isn’t the Old Testament God ruthless and cruel? What’s wrong with gay marriage? Isn’t Christianity demeaning to women? How can there be only one way to God?

28. Is there any scientific evidence for a young Earth argument? Too few supernova remnants. According to astronomical observations, galaxies like our own experience about one supernova (a violently-exploding star) every 25 years. The gas and dust remnants from such explosions (like the Crab Nebula) expand outward rapidly and should remain visible for over amillion years. Yet the nearby parts of our galaxy in which we could observe such gas and dust shells contain only about 200 supernova remnants. That number is consistent with only about7,000 yearsworth of supernovas.3

29.  Comets disintegrate too quickly. According to evolutionary theory, comets are supposed to be the same age as the solar system, about five billionyears. Yet each time a comet orbits close to the sun, it loses so much of its material that it could not survive much longer than about 100,000 years. Many comets have typical ages of less than 10,000 years.4 Evolutionists explain this discrepancy by assuming that (a) comets come from an unobserved spherical "Oort cloud" well beyond the orbit of Pluto, (b) improbable gravitational interactions with infrequently passing stars often knock comets into the solar system, and (c) other improbable interactions with planets slow down the incoming comets often enough to account for the hundreds of comets observed.5 So far, none of these assumptions has been substantiated either by observations or realistic calculations. Lately, there has been much talk of the "Kuiper Belt," a disc of supposed comet sources lying in the plane of the solar system just outside the orbit of Pluto. Some asteroid-sized bodies of ice exist in that location, but they do not solve the evolutionists' problem, since according to evolutionary theory, the Kuiper Belt would quickly become exhausted if there were no Oort cloud to supply it.

30. Not enough mud on the sea floor. Each year, water and winds erode about 20 billion tons of dirt and rock from the continents and deposit it in the ocean.6This material accumulates as loose sediment on the hard basaltic (lava-formed) rock of the ocean floor. The average depth of all the sediment in the whole ocean is less than 400 meters.7The main way known to remove the sediment from the ocean floor is by plate tectonic subduction. That is, sea floor slides slowly (a few cm/year) beneath the continents, taking some sediment with it. According to secular scientific literature, that process presently removes only 1 billion tons per year.7As far as anyone knows, the other 19 billion tons per year simply accumulate. At that rate, erosion would deposit the present mass of sediment in less than12 million years. Yet according to evolutionary theory, erosion and plate subduction have been going on as long as the oceans have existed, an allegedthree billion years. If that were so, the rates above imply that the oceans would be massively choked with sediment dozens of kilometers deep. An alternative (creationist) explanation is that erosion from the waters of the Genesis flood running off the continents deposited the present amount of sediment within a short time about 5,000 years ago.

31. Too much carbon 14 in deep geologic strata. With their short 5,700-year half-life, no carbon 14 atoms should exist in any carbon older than 250,000 years. Yet it has proven impossible to find any natural source of carbon below Pleistocene (Ice Age) strata that does not contain significant amounts of carbon 14, even though such strata are supposed to be millions or billions of years old. Conventional carbon 14 laboratories have been aware of this anomaly since the early 1980s, have striven to eliminate it, and are unable to account for it. Lately the world's best such laboratory which has learned during two decades of low-C14 measurements how not to contaminate specimens externally, under contract to creationists, confirmed such observations for coal samples and even for a dozen diamonds, which cannot be contaminated in situ with recent carbon.27 These constitute very strong evidence that the earth is only thousands, not billions, of years old.